Random notes on random viewing

There’s nothing systematic about what I’ve been watching for the past month and more, and nothing especially coherent for me to say about it.  But to sustain this long streak of reviewing as it approaches its 15^th anniversary, I will offer some casual commentary and a few real finds.  I’m in process with two composite reviews (“Netflix in excelsis” and “Coming to the crux of the current year”) which I will post as they reach critical mass, continuing my effort to offer friendly advice to the thoughtful consumer of streaming media.  (For a guide to cord-cutting choices, see my post “Streaming along.”)

Silicon Valley (MC-84, HBO) makes an appropriate addendum to my recent post “Good as they ever were,” as the sixth and final season unfolded with undiminished wit and glee.  Just as I get much of my political news from Colbert et al, virtually everything I know about the world of big tech comes from this well-written and well-acted comedy (with pre-history supplied by the excellent dramatic series Halt and Catch Fire (MC-75).)  This season brings us up to the present, ripped from the headlines you could say, with a focus on the ethics of tech, and the potential for bad results as well as good, evil as well as virtue, in tech disruption.  The thinking is big, the writing is sharp, the acting is fantastic.  Many witty delights add up to make this one of best shows of the decade.

With Veep gone to its reward, Silicon Valley was now paired on HBO with the limited series Mrs. Fletcher (MC-72, HBO).  I found the series limited in a lot of ways.  I can’t quite say it was limited to the appeal of Kathryn Hahn, because a lot of the cast was pretty good.  It certainly felt unusually truncated at seven episodes, cutting off just when the diverging stories converge, of a kid off to college and a divorced mother left alone for the first time, each trying to explore a new sexual landscape.  Maybe that’s the set-up for future seasons after all, with the writer of the source novel Tom Perrotta running the show, and working off the success (so I’m told) of The Leftovers.  Personally, I won’t feel compelled to watch.  A nice little workshop, however, for exclusively female directors

As another postscript to “Good as they ever were,” let me say Doc Martin ended its ninth season on a high note, and I hope to see more in the future.  Meanwhile, I had occasion to revisit a few episodes of The Detectorists, which has sadly but wisely concluded after three all-too-short seasons.  Together these two shows offer ample reason to subscribe to Acorn TV for a month or two, but earlier seasons are available on a variety of streaming channels.

Within the realm of British comedies, I have to report enjoying the second season of The End of F***ing World (MC-77, NFX), but can’t recommend it as enthusiastically as I did the first.

I have a certain resistance to Ken Burns, the man and his work, but somehow he always seems to overcome it when given a chance.  I wouldn’t have chosen to watch his latest protracted, self-important effort, but my housemate was doing her exercises to it, and I was eventually drawn in, and wound up watching six out of the eight two-hour episodes in his Country Music (MC-80, PBS).  As long as he avoids portentous narration over lingering still images set to syrupy music, and can rely on live archival footage, Burns provides a valuable service despite the tendency to go on and on.

Not only that, the series set me off on a country music viewing jag, starting with the superlative documentary The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash (MC-tbd, YouTube), which is authorized but not sanitized, much of the narration taken from audiotapes made by Cash himself while composing his autobiography.  And director Thom Zimny is far from a paid hack, giving the film a distinctive visual style, around the delightful performance clips from every stage of the Man in Black’s long and fruitful career

I even watched (parts of) a Dolly Parton tv special celebrating her 50 years at the Grand Old Opry, and now I’m tracking down two feature films I remember quite fondly, Coal Miner’s Daughter and Walk the Line, in order to re-view them.

Though I no longer have a professional interest in films about painters, I’m still inclined to watch them, so on PBS I caught up with the play Red on “Great Performances” and the documentary Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous on “American Masters.”  Alfred Molina is pretty great, if over the top, as Rothko, but the assistant who is his interlocutor is too “theatrical” for my taste, and the stage business generally unconvincing, but the dialogue definitely had merit as insight into Rothko’s approach to art.  The interrelated documentary was workmanlike but worthwhile.  I’m still on the lookout for two recent features about painters, Never Look Away and At Eternity’s Gate, and will report when I see them.